On Wednesday, Mr. Conybeare made a speech at Belfast to
a Nationalist gathering, which deserves notice on account of
its remarkable aloofness from reason and common-sense. He told his audience that when he was in Dublin he investi- gated the recent dynamite explosion, and that among his friends there it was " generally accepted" that the outrage was committed by the same individual who had committed the outrage a year ago, and that this person was " generally surmised" to be a dismissed Castle official. Mr. Balfour and the Castle officials knew then perfectly well who was the perpetrator :—" From purely political motives Mr. Balfour, who was ready to throw poor tenants who could not pay their rents into prison—from purely political motives this stern guardian of law and order refused to undertake or order the prosecution of this miscreant." We wonder if Mr. Conybeare really believes this cock-and-bull story ? If he does, he has been a victim of those hoaxes which Irishmen delight to play off upon the Saxon tourist. A Saxon tourist at Castle-Island —a place round which the map is thickly dotted with the red crosses that denoted agrarian murder—was, it is said, discussing with a local police official the reason which had given Castle-Island its hideous notoriety. The official at last suggested, in grim irony, that the murders were probably committed by men sent down by the Castle. The tourist swallowed the suggestion eagerly, and came back to England to declare with horror that an official had actually admitted to him that the Castle-Island murders were probably the work of the Castle. Mr. Conybeare has been the victim of a similar piece of Irish humour.
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